During all my years of school my motto was, "Just one more day". You have a test tomorrow and fifteen assignments due the day after? Take it one day at a time. Theres just one more day, then you can relax. 

Now its here! With tomorrow being my last day at school, I'm not exactly sure how to feel. Should I be happy that its all finally over, or be sad that it's ending? Surely I couldn't have enjoyed all the stress of completing mostly meaningless assignments, or cramming before a test just to forget the topics a couple days later. Maybe it was the people, but I've also met my fair share of people outside of school that I would bet are either on par or better than those at school.

So I guess this boils down to the question of, "what would you miss about school?", yet I'm grasping at threads to exactly what I would miss. Almost any aspect of school I could isolate, there is a better counterfactual that would be a better way to achieve that goal. Going to parties or libraries to make friends, self learning concepts instead of long lectures, and even joining sporting events for the community. So why would I miss school if every part of it could be replaced? The people themselves I could meet outside of the context of school if I really wanted. So why?

In reality I'd like to think its some version of Stolkhome Syndrome. The fact that my internal habits will be changing so drastically, not having a 9am-3pm schedule of pure lectures, changing to completely new method of socialization and learning—it'll be better, but scarily different. With days passing by fast, I'll make sure to keep in contact with as many people as possible, making sure the past 12 years will at least  remembered.

With so many of my projects & ideas put off till "after school ends", it begs the question of if they'll ever happen. Motivation doesn't seem to be magically entering my fingers as the end approaches, and I think I'm fine with that. At least now I won't have the constant excuse of school lurking around the corner, but I honestly don't know if thats enough to spur me into action. Hopefully I'll wake up tomorrow, school will be over, and I'll magically have everything in my life fixed—but I know that won't happen.

So if I had to summarize it all, this would be my open note to school:

I was so invested into the small moments, I never even realized you had passed since it was too late. Though not great in teaching or even socialization, I've been with you for these past 12 years. I'll miss how you put me in situations good and bad, forcing me to make friends in the hallways. Even when it was 3am and I was praying for you to just end, your uncaring bells still rung the next day.

Most of all though, I want to at least remember you—the amalgamation of all the people I've met in the past years. With every person I forget and every person I don't meet, a small part of that memory will fade into oblivion. I don't want to act like nothing happened for 12 years of my life.

I'm glad that you're over. I want to remember you. I hope I change.

what do you do when it really is the last day?

I find myself asking that question constantly, from my 3rd grade self finding meaning in eating food to philosophical tirades in high school debate. Honestly I thought philosophers had it mostly down—existentialism, virtue ethics, hedonism, error theory (my favorite), to even intuitionism. Finally I just settled on a vague idea of "happiness", a (simple but) complete solution.

Though, while reading "When Breath Becomes Air" by Paul Kalanith one word stood out to me: human relationality. Initially thinking through the idea as "K-literature jargon", the text around it ended up changing my mind:

> A word meant something only between people, and life’s meaning, its virtue, had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form. It was the relational aspect of humans—i.e., “human relationality”—that undergirded meaning.  

Looking at meaning through the lens of "human relationality" made my life in retrospect make sense. Thinking back to all the times where I've been the happiest, one thing stands out—they've been with people. If pure happiness was the factor, I'm sure food would be at the top, but that's almost never what comes to mind. Even when enjoying media or art, similar to Camus, those are just abstractions of connections with other humans. Humans tend to be at the center of meaning.

The book also takes a unique approach to storytelling, not necessarily having a plot, a happy ending, or even a solid moral conclusion. Seeing the journey of someone start looking for meaning, end up blinding themselves (metaphorically) in their journey, and finally finding meaning in the people around him, makes you think—is looking for meaning in life worthwhile? Or to better phrase it, should one even look for meaning in life?

This idea struck a chord with me, especially after that simple question being such a core facet of my internal monologue; searching for meaning can elucidate you to the "true meaning". Whenever I've felt the happiest, its not because I've necessarily been optimizing towards that feeling my entire life. I've felt that way when I've been with people, enjoying life. Similar to how working with cadavers creates numbness to human connection, I think searching meaning can numb you to "real" meaning around you in life. Similar to optimization problems, staying stable in one spot just thinking won't help—exploration and living life will (especially if your "meaning" is human relationality).

With that idea combined with human relationality, it provides a decent basis for life—finding meaning in the relationships around you, while not overthinking it too much.

This all begs the question of why. Especially as a relativist, why contemplate meaning in life? Similar to my post on simulations, I believe we constantly live in abstractions—do well in school, make money, get into college, make a promotion—which is great short term. Long term these bring us away from our core values, even making us forget them (hence feelings of regret/emptiness). Searching for meaning (not excessively like I said before, but at least thinking about it) in my opinion, just grounds all of these simulations to a singular goal, making sure you're not on autopilot 24/7.

TLDR; Human relationality is a cool concept, and you shouldn't think too much about the meaning to life but instead just enjoy the people around you.

Hope this helps broaden someones understanding in some way and I definitely recommend giving When Breath Becomes Air a read!

a new perspective on how to view life (taken from paul kalanith's when breath becomes air)

For reference, I'll be talking about simulations here in a less technical sense, so sadly no, I am not going to be talking about how we all live in the Matrix and need to take red pills. Though I think talking about simulations in an abstract construct sense, we can look into our lives in an interesting way.

Have you ever done something, and ever wondered why you're actually doing something, even though you might not like it? Like studying or working, we do things that may not directly make us happy, but we justify it through the idea that it might make life more pleasurable in the "long run", or after a period of time. Usually this end goal is happiness or something of the sort, where we make small sacrifices to guarantee that goal.

Now going back to simulations and how they play a part in this scheme. All of these constructs, whether it be school, work, interpersonal relations, they all have something in common, where they try and abstract the idea of gaining happiness to a level. For example let's take capitalism and work. People work, and create multiple simulations like the economy, the idea of capital, work, and say that all of these will bring you happiness to a level due to increase in global capital and distributing materials. It also abstracts the idea that capital is happiness, and that more capital is equal to more opportunities  which is what we should all strive for. In that way we abstract our happiness to be equivalent with work and capital. 

Once you start looking, there are tons of abstractions that are in our everyday life, from the abstraction that we need to create relationships with other people to sustain ourselves and be stable, to everyday digital ones. Even with this considered, I don't think these simulations are necessarily bad, most are even great for people, like family and education. All of these simulations are necessary to deal with the complexities of day to day life, since we can't really just spend years pondering what would make us happy (or is the thought that work/innovation is necessary a construct *confused meta noises ensue*). 

The part I want to focus, is with the fact that there are thousands of these simulations on top of each other, that make up our day to day world. Just like any construct or simulation, you lose a part of the goal, albeit a small percentage, every single time. Even though from step to step, it might seem like a good simulation, the inefficiencies in every step build a completely distorted worldview that we see today. Today people have created entire businesses that manipulate the economy, or judge people by tests that have no real basis in any science.

This is what I would say is the cause of confusion when you find yourself doing things that don't really "matter" but you're stuck doing it anyway since its meant to help a construct of a construct of a construct so much so that its distanced from what actually makes you happy. Some people act only in this realm of simulations, and end up confused at the end that the happiness that they've been optimizing for, or any goal for that matter, hasn't been achieved. 

So, what to do? I'm not exactly sure myself, but I don't think simulations in of themselves are bad, since you need them at some level to act, but having too many might blind you to what your real goal is. Its good to self check often and assess if what you're doing is to please others, help gain wealth, and many other things, is ultimately making YOU happy in the long and short run. I honestly don't have a perfect solution to this, but breaking through these simulations once in a while, and not getting too tangled up in them (stress for deadlines, tests, needs for improvement), can be helpful. 

This has been something I've thought about for a hot while, and its nice to get it on paper. Hope you understood it, or it helped you think a little more about the world!

What is a simulation, and how do they serve us in our day to day lives?

> FYI - This is a new type of article/blogpost I'm trying out based off Emil Cioran, though this is just a test. It's supposed to be harder to read with sentence fragments throughout, and ask more questions than giving answers. It might not be your cup of tea, but feel free to read it (at your own risk haha)! Cioran mostly wrote for himself in a therapeutic way, so I wanted to see if something informal like this is something that might be fun.  

## Whats the Point?

We live we die, but we keep memories. Do we even live if we don't remember something? Without memory, everything is just the present. Memory is intrinsically our meaning in life, for it is what we remember when we die. Even if it isn't, the fact that it will be the only thing that determines happiness upon death, should be an indication. That could mean that the past never existed, but the present is everything. That would also mean that every moment has to be memorable. Is there any value in an unmemorable moment? One spent dawdling the day away, looking at grass, when you could have been skiing down the Eiffel Tower. What makes a memory intrinsically memorable? Probably fun, however subjective that might be.

Most of my memories are short, or for 10 days. It's crazy to think that 10 days is also the amount of time I spend in school, or studying for a test. Are those preparations for the future, really giving me more memories? How can you min max the ideal of work and living in the moment? The ultimate good would be to enjoy the momentary work, which builds enjoyment for the future. Preparing for the future is an endlessly regressive task, that doesn't have much enjoyment. Does someone who prepares to live, up to the point they die, have a more fulfilling life than a person that lives with no regard for the future? This brings back to themes of capitalism, which I wont touch on, but its important to think about where we want to go in life

## The Passing Days

If we have the ability to make memories constantly, by embarking on fun tasks, why do we work? Small moments can be memorable in mass, but then you need to weigh it against larger more maintainable memories. There will always be something lost at the end though, because you can't remember every single day that happens. Living life to its fullest is important, and to not get ensnared into the capitalist ethic of working until death, just for a remorseful grasp at a vacation at cripplingly old age. To do this, we need to reorient our goals from being physically rich, to being experientially rich. This links with what millionares say, where money can't buy happiness. It also has themes of absurdity, where we should accept experience as experience, as long as we live in the moment, and don't let it pass by instantaneously.

What makes a memory fun? If we take an absurdist view, where everything is memorable, but that isn't true. The only way that could work, is noticing the details in life, and capturing it with some significance. Since you ascribe significance subjectively, this would mean that you actively need to search out for significance to create memories. This search for significance could be thought as a search for meaning, but I take it to a much lesser degree. The smallest memory, is one that is a step for finding meaning, but not completely grasping it. Through the cumulation of significant moments in life, we can find arbitrary meaning in life. 

## In The End.

I'll try to have more experiences like the Zephyr before school ends, but is it even possible with school? What is the meaning of school if at the end, you don't even remember it? People have nostalgia for highschool, but comparatively I can't name 10 days in middle school as memory packed as the Zephyr. Does this mean that the most efficient way to find meaning, is through small compact significant experiences, over time? This way you maximize memories, preferably 10 days at a time, then by the end of the year, you have 36 memories to share. Through that, you may be able to slowly march yourself into finding meaning in life, and building towards a more fulfilling death.

Sentence fragments on the nature of memories. Trying out a new writing style, read at your own risk...

TLDR; Motivation is a push against inertia, so it's counterintuitive to wait for it. You have to be a little spontaneous, and actually make it a habit to gain motivation, or find external motivation through parents/friends/commitments.

## What is Motivation?

Okay, so now starting with the base question: What is motivation? I think a good place to start here is with most peoples dilemma, not being able to find motivation, and therefore never starting something. The way I see it, in most cases this would mean motivation is a push against ones social inertia, in one way or another. Let's look at picking up your trash for example. There is a great reason to pick it up, but some people just don't because they aren't "motivated to". This applies to almost any case, all the way to not wanting to learn something, which is the fundamental idea that there is no intrinsic reason to do it.

Now after defining it, let's take a look at most peoples reason to not do something, which happens to be "not motivated". Since we've defined motivation as basic social inertia, it becomes apparent that motivation can come from 2 ways, spontaneity, or through external means (a push from someone else, or to meet a goal). Spontaneity is a great way to try many things, and to be motivated to do "stuff". It could be almost anything they want. The second means can be seen in practice often when parents try to push small kids to do activities, which they may not be motivated to do at first, but after time they start to like it, and are motivated. 

This leads to the greatest sin, waiting for motivation. Since motivation is a push against inertia, by waiting around and building habits, you actively make it harder for yourself to get motivated, by gaining inertia. This often leads to a cycle of regret, where you wait for the perfect motivation to do something, but end up never doing it, or just forgetting about it all-together. A great way to imagine this, is to think of humans as advanced dogs. We love to follow patterns and ruts, but if we ever want to break the rut, no gut feeling will tell us, because internally we love these ruts. It really is a funny cruel way for life to act, but in the end, that would mean the spontaneous win out, while the people who wait for the perfect second end up failing. 

## So what?

So! How do we end up gaining motivation, and doing things that we want to do? One way is to become spontaneous. Act on every desire you have, and when you feel like something, just do it! It's a funny thing to say, but most often, the cure to motivation, is to just do it. You'll find motivation as the "inertia" to do the task lowers, basically meaning as you find it becoming a rut/habit (In a funny sense, that makes motivation counterintuitive, but meh). The only way to build spontaneity, is to be a little spontaneous in a sense (It sometimes doesn't even have to come from spontaneity, some people find it in motivational music or speeches).

The second way, is to find it externally. This could be a whole range of things, but the one I find interesting is to have a friend motivate you. This can be seen in many areas to work, like studying, where most people like an "Hours" type group, where they check in every hour or so, give progress checks, and share screens the entire time. I think this could be applied to a whole range of areas, with people reminding you to try something new and stick with it. Personally, this works with me by making commitments to show people things, which motivate me by not wanting to flake on them. Really, any means of motivation aside from yourself should work.

Now with your newfound knowledge what shall you do? Climb Mt. Everest maybe? Take on a pack of ravenous wolves? Take out the trash? Whatever you do now, just make sure to never wait for motivation to do anything, but try to apply some of the methods I said above.  You might even learn to incorporate tons of cool new habits, and isn't that really what motivation is for?

What is motivation, and how can people get more of it? Learn a bit about my perspective!

So... the education system. Its a given fact that almost every person has some qualm with it, from the capitalistic colleges, to the uninspired highschool system. This has been a huge qualm that almost every student has gone through, so why hasn't it been solved already? You would think that if every single person in the US was forced to go through a system, it would be polished to perfection from the sheer magnitude of people that go through it. Today I'll try and explore how, and why its remained unchanged for so long, and give my 2 cents on how to fix it.  

Starting with the first reason, is the way education is taught. The fact of the matter is that it's always going to be easier to make people memorize, than learn. Since every kid learns a different way, if you just make them memorize and test, they won't learn, but you may see some short term results. Students never really learn anything that way.  

The way people learn, is by personal teaching, and idea based learning, which is intrinsically going to be very hard if you just try to stick by a "curriculum". Some teachers do manage to do this, but its multitudes harder than just sitting in the back and putting on a slide show. There is no incentive for teachers to be "good teachers", because as long as students pass, they get paid.  

Secondly, for colleges and schools, there is no competition. Colleges know they can milk money from you for reputation, even if the actual learning experience is the same. If you ask a regular high schooler if they would go to MIT without learning, or community college with MIT courses, the obvious choice should be the community college. But at the end of the day, in our twisted world, people choose MIT, just for the prestige. Since people talented flock to colleges for the name, you can't really have any other competition, which makes the cost skyrocket. The fact of the matter is that almost any college could use endowments for tuition, or more, but they don't and they won't because they can make money off of you.  

The final reason for all of this, is the risk for students. Sure, I could try and drop out of high school, or I could take 0 AP classes and self study as much as possible outside of school, but that doesn't guarantee anything. I could take useless classes, pay thousands for college, and do good in life, or take the risky way and rely on myself. In an ideal world with more than one life, I might try and take the risky way, but since I'm good at academics, and seem to benefit from the system, I probably won't do anything.  

This type of system feeds into itself, because it's all built out, and trying to change it from the inside out is risky, and taking any other path is risky. When people leave the system, they see their success, and just take it as a "quirk of life". So my hope is sometime, someday, once I do make it out, I can change it from the outside in, and make sure no-one else has to choose between risk, and real education.  

So, the system is broken, and it's terribly hard to change. What do we do? First of all, I think we should invest way more into school, and specifically teachers. When you pay them too little, you end up getting unmotivated workers, and lose all the ones that love to teach, but can't live with the wage. Currently, if someone is a good teacher, they can most likely be paid better in another job outside of school. You can't get motivated, good teachers, that will deviate from curriculum and teach well, if you don't hire good teachers. And the only way to hire good teachers is with good pay. There is no real way around it, and people shouldn't have to choose between their passion and money.  

Another solution would be a decentralized way to rank colleges. This way, you can have something like critics for colleges, who are able to rank teachers and more. This means that if you can prove that a place like community college has a class on par with unmotivated teachers from a university, you're able to choose the community college. This would force colleges to lower tuition fees to attract students, as they know which places have good teachers. This could even be paired with a "standardized test" (not written, probably a test of real world skills), to judge someones skills without their degree. This would also make colleges provide quality education to stay on top.  

Thats basically my 2 cents and rant on education, and I hope you were able to take something away from it! I believe that the tech industry can (hopefully) save education in some way or form.

Here I take a look at why the education system as a whole is doomed to repeat its cycle, and how we need a strong force of change.

Why does capitalism sound so appealing? Logically speaking, it should be the best system, were anyone with an idea can make things and money, as well as places where people. can make money by investing in people and so forth. While studying for my world history class, I was drawn deeper into the capitalistic fantasy, where technically anything can be solved by the market, because of the idea that it's just the amalgamation of humanities desires. In poverty, need investments? It would be profitable to create income share agreements with people in poverty, as well as make venture capitalist firms. Rather than searching stuff up reasons on why capitalism is flawed (at least in our current society), I tried to think of reasons by myself.

After some thought, my main indite to capitalism, is that it requires everyone to be rationally evil, or perfectly greedy. That basically means, no one would really hate anyone, or like anyone, everyone would just want money. This would come before any relation you have, including family, friends, your city, and everything. Thus, the main thing that hold back capitalism, is tribalism, where we form groups within the human race, and try to serve them. These can be based on race, ethnicity, wealth or income. The reason people haven't already started an income share agreements is the pretense that "the poor" aren't as smart, or wouldn't be able to profit, as with other tribal assumptions. 

Some people may point out that these ISA companies have already started to pop up in tech, like Lambda School, among many others. Although they aren't marketed as much to people in poverty, it's a good example of how tribalism is slowly fading away. As people and lifestyles start to homogenize, and we find fewer things to find "different" about others, tribalism will slowly fade away, as we can see right now. Once that happens, I believe we could probably live in a utopian capitalism society.

So what should we do now? I hear some people talk about communism, but even though it may sound good, it's just a variation of the same problem, as it feeds off rational altruism. Communism could only work if everyone was the same, and if tribalism was conquered. If that does happen though, I still believe a capitalist economy with progress based off greed would progress further, without any of the drawbacks we see today, as they all stem from some form of tribalism. 

Thus I come to the conclusion of socialism, which is neither purely capitalist, or communist, but a blend of the two that match reality. Just as humans are neither perfectly altruistic, nor perfectly greedy, an economic system shouldn't be based on humans being either. Socialism is a great alternative that most societies use today (even the US with its welfare programs), where we can stay until we transition out of tribalism. After then, if we have the choice to choose between the two extremes, I would pick capitalism, as it wouldn't have many of the downsides that come with capitalism.

Overall, this is just a quick jot down of my thoughts on all three, and my opinion on what the main problem is that stops us from progressing as a society. But always remember, these ideas are always subject to change, as opinions usually are, and I'm happy to hear any differing thoughts on anytime!

Update April 2021: I've been thinking about this more, and the link between the capitalist free market and democracy, therefore justifying capitalism because democracy good. I agree with the relation, but its not always right to believe democracy to be the "100% best no questions asked" idea. The problem here, is the free market is like early total democracies, where every single person would vote for every legislation. There would be chaos, and people wouldn't be able to make proper informed decisions in every area (hence why the US is a representative democracy). This is the same reason why the free market is flawed. This can also be applied to socialism, which can be related to a representative democracy, where everyone may not get a direct say in everything, but can indirectly influence the market (ie. standardized healthcare prices). Just adding this in there as a thought I had recently.

The age old debate of whether capitalism is the best economic system.

Is that true? Thats the question almost all of us have thought at least once in your lives. This skepticism about ideas can help us learn more, but at some point we realize that we should just take something as given. 

Starting with why skepticism is useful, is how it helps us get closer to the "truth". If we wholly accept everything said and done in front of us, that would be naive and lead to many baseless ideas. Through skepticism of other people's ideas, we can test for new viewpoints, and help us realize how some of our deepest beliefs might be wrong. This happens all the time, such as flat vs round earth, slavery, and so many other revolutionary ideas born out of skepticism of the status quo. In this light, questioning our deepest help beliefs is the key to change and progress.

On the other hand, we have a different class of skepticism. There are skeptics of reality itself, and whether or not what we see, touch, and smell are real. To this type of skepticism, I would say that it is unproductive. The key to effective skepticism, is that through disproving the idea, humanity could change for the better. If someone proved reality was fake through moral philosophy, then nothing would happen. Everyone would have to go through their day to day lives with nothing being different. Since nothing would actually be achieved, that would render being a skeptic about reality not useful at all, and therefore would be frivolous skepticism.

This was a quick brain dump of what an idea I had to differentiate "good" vs "bad" skepticism. I love skepticism about different moral theories (woot for metaethics), but I sometimes feel like some post-modern skeptics questioning reality have no aim. See you next week!

What is skepticism, is it good, and is there such a thing as too much skepticism?

Hackathon stickers are the best. Not only do you get to put them on your laptop for clout and design, you can trade them for EVEN cooler stickers. But the best thing hands down, is the memory with each sticker. Be it the pains and work of organizing a hackathon, or the joy of staying up the entire night getting that one bug, every time you look at the sticker, you remember everything that happened. The best part is that each and every sticker you get is usually limited to whatever is at the hackathon, so sticker trading becomes amazing, with limited stock of almost every sticker as time goes on.  They're also amazing to give out for advertising clubs *cough* *cough* HackClub.

Along with all those benefits, hackaton stickers textures are amazing. I'm not just talking about those cheap 'ol paper stickers that leave a weird residue when taken off, but the epic vinyl stickers. Not only is the vinyl texture amazing and not feel cheap, it comes off easily. This  allowed for you to swap off stickers when you get tired of one, or if one deteriorates, which makes it just that much more cool. Though one of the best stickers I got was at a conference where one of the booths gave out wooden stickers. I regret not taking a handful, but the sticker remains on my laptop to this day, as one of the coolest stickers. Its an amazing conversation starter, and is definitely a unique sticker that people remember.

As you can tell, I have quite a big sticker collection, and plan on getting more! I also can't wait for in person hackathons to start trading again and see some cool new stickers!

STICKER STICKER! Why stickers are so great for hackathons, and generally some of the best swag if done right.

Over the past few years, our country has been divided greatly, and just now we are seeing the consequences of this, with the storming of the capitol. This can be shown through so many examples, where we see two ends of the spectrum. Either someone is a huge left wing social justice warrior, or a right winged bigot. If you think about this logically, it would make more sense if these radical extremes are the minorities, but we see constantly with protests and other issues that it sometimes doesn't work that way. Along with the huge division, we see the difference of views in areas, from urban Bay Area, to the rural Midwest. How can it be, that in the same country, with the same laws, and the same president, we get two groups with completely different opinions, that can't agree on almost anything? That's what I'll try and tackle in this post, and my take on how it could possibly be fixed.

The most prevalent cause of political division has to be recommendation engines. Take our Twitter feed for example; people follow users who's views mesh with theirs, while tend to stay away from other opinions. This isn't just which people you follow, because Twitter uses impressions, likes, retweets, and so much more to find your political view, and show you more of whatever it may be. This essentially creates a bubble of sorts, where peoples own views get validated again and again, making it seem like a popular opinion, even though it might not be true. If we look at a "flat-earthers" Twitter feed we might see more of a bias towards that political view, due to liking and retweeting other flat earth tweets. This creates a constant affirmation of ones beliefs, which leads to more radical beliefs, such as QAnon etc. 

Now instead of Twitter, imagine this on a large scale, where every website you see is catered to your liking, and built for your biases. This makes your entire internet experience a bubble where out of billions of viewpoints you get shown the ones you like, causing you to get pushed to an extrema. Take this in opposed to life before the internet, were news didn't change its opinion to your preferences, and you were forced to look straight into the logic of the other side.

Now if you mix this with our human tribalism (simply explained, tribalism is the idea that humans form a tribe with great bonds, which was a great survival adaptation to work together), you get the toxic polarized environment we live in. Because of this tribalism, we tend to merge our political beliefs with our identity and livelihood. The problem with this, is that once you see your beliefs and your identity as one, once you see someone with a different political belief, that means that they attack your identity. An example of this can be taken from the generic "discord debate", where people debate without any real intention of changing their views. The reason for this is since their belief is their identity, they have to forsake their identity to actually believe the other person, which leads to why you still believe something when people have proven it wrong. I think CGP Grey's Q&A video says this perfectly --

> "The trick is to keep your identity separate from your opinions -- they are objects in a box you carry with you and should be easily replaceable if it turns out they're no good. If you think that the opinions in the box are *who you are* then you'll cling to them despite any evidence to the contrary. Bottom line: If you want to always be right, you need to always be prepared to change your mind."

The last reason I believe our system is so polarized, is because of the election system. If you think about our current political landscape, its pretty naive to believe that there are going to be two solutions to every problem, democratic and republican. So how did it become this way, with almost every issue being either democratic, or republican. The answer to this is the election system. I think Nicky Case explains this really well in their election simulator. I'll use their simulator for images in the rest of the article.

Currently we have a winner takes all election system, where each person can only vote once. If you think of the US as a diverse group of people on a political compass, and place each candidate on a compass, you get this.

Here, triangle wins with a small margin of about 10 votes, which means that they win the election. Now lets imagine this scenario with many candidates on the right.

Here, even though the right may be more popular, the left side won the election. This is because the right has many different candidates with diverse views, while the left only has one candidate. The same idea applies to real life, where a diversity of ideas, hurts political candidates. Each party, democratic and republican, try to take a stance on every single topic to influence a majority of voters, while trying to keep it as polarizing as possible to make sure they don't step on each others toes. This also is another reason why we only have 2 parties, because every other political part slowly merged into two opposing parties, themselves, against the enemies. 

Not only does this mean our political system is twisted in a way which makes it so we have two polarizing views, but since they are so different, they start to divide the country. Each election since the first has slowly pushed the boundaries, becoming more and more "left" vs "right", so much so that people's identities are no longer able to change with the president. That means that when a new president is elected, its so different from ones own views, that it starts to become an affront to their identity, and therefore themselves.

So, how can we dig ourselves out of this hole? One major idea is to disassociate yourself from your opinions, and realize when opinions are opinions. Instead of calling ourselves liberals, or some other identity, and then homogenizing ourselves try and formulate your own unique opinion on every topic. Left and right are very broad generalizations where realistically, you most likely won't agree with every single party on every single topic. What I usually do, is approach each question with an open mind, and try and hide any biases I may have from other issues. For example regarding abolishing the police, instead of saying I'm a leftist so lets abolish the police, I would look at the pros and cons of the topic, and slowly formulate an opinion.

Another thing you can do is as I said before, think of your opinions as not you. Imagine your opinions as a bucket of rocks you carry around, and if you find a better, shinier rock, you can place it in the bucket and throw out the old one. This ideology helps you get closer to the "truth" or "best solution", whatever it may be, because you don't associate yourself with any of your opinions, and can assess each one fairly.

The one major change that would be a great help to stop polarization would be changing the way elections are decided (not the Electoral College, though I think its outdated, it doesn't really contribute much to polarization). Again, Nick Casey explains this in much more detail, so I encourage you to take a look at their website, where they compare and contrast alternative systems, but in my opinion, score voting could be a good alternative (Take a look at their website, which explains why!)

Overall I think this was mostly a brain dump of what I've been thinking about for a long time, and something that has come in to light due to current events. I honestly believe that if this problem can get solved, and we can realize our own biases, the world can become a better place with many diverse views.

 I hope that this can help you in some way or another, be it in you actually incorporate it into your life, or if I've offered up an interesting opinion to think about.

My take on an increasingly polarizing political landscape, how we got here, and my ideas of how to get out of it.

#my take

one more day

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Education Part 2: Why Nothing Gets Done

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